BREAKING UP
US, 1978, 90 minutes, Colour.
Lee Remick, Granville van Dusen.
Directed by Delbert Mann.
Breaking up is a telemovie well worth seeing. Its title indicates its theme: a sixteen-years-long marriage collapsing, with sad effects especially for the wife and children. The material is familiar but it is handled with some vigour and honesty. The screenplay by Loring Mandel was Emmy-nominated, as was director Delbert Mann who won an Oscar in 1955 for Marty, made a number of significant dramas as well as light films and moved into television in the late '60s with dramatising classics like David Copperfield, Kidnapped, Jane Eyre. In the late '70s he remade All Quiet On The Western Front. Lee Remick, excellent in so many roles in telemovies and cinema in the late '70s, is at the centre of this film. She worked with Delbert Mann in the telemovies A Girl Named Sooner (1975) and Torn Between Two Lovers (1979). The film is reminiscent of Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried woman with Jill Clayburgh. This telemovie brings these issues down to the level of the average viewer and to that extent is probably much more telling.
1. The role of the telemovie: entertainment, mirroring society, raising issues, analysing and dramatising them? Making them credible? Suggesting solutions?
2. The telemovie style: American emphasis, colour gloss, details of family life, American society? Mirroring international societies? Popular yet serious? Geared for home audience understanding and response?
3. Lee Remick and her qualities holding the film? Award nominations? The quality of the film and its standard as telemovie?
4. The phenomenon of separations, divorce? The statistics of the latter part of the 20th. century? The facts and the stories behind the facts? The reasons for marriage break-up, selfishness, emotional, uncertainties? Sound reasons and poor? The consequences for families, individuals? Legal repercussions? The shaping of new lives?
5. Audience understanding of contemporary marriage, break-up and divorce? Audience tolerance for the phenomenon? The need for understanding the individuals involved, broadening views about separation and divorce?
6. The presentation of the family the picnic sequences, tension and happiness? The expectations from the title and the sudden information given by Tom to Joanne? The placid surface, and yet the harsh realities underneath?
7. Tom and his casual telling of Joanne, the reasons and their inadequacy, (true or not), his responsibility for the marriage and his wanting to opt out? Joanne's attempts to hold them together, intimacy, sexuality, interests, work, the children? The meal sequences and the family's tension? Amy overhearing her parents' discussion? The casual decision to move out and Joanne having to give permission? Having to face a new life?
8. Audiences gauging the effect of the separation by the response to the children: Amy and her believing in her father, wanting to phone him, with anxiety at T.C.'s illness, her suspicions about him seeing other women, the outings, the abuse of her mother and blaming her, running away and her father sending her back? The many talks with her mother and her moodiness? Her final forgiveness of her? T.C. and his love for his mother, his illness, tension, his losing interest in his father? The sequence of their fighting and then the father taking them to the film? Would they grow away from him?
9. How sympathetic was the screenplay to Tom? His restlessness, awkward handling of the situation, leaving and setting himself up in an apartment, seeing girls? Joanne's failure to get her friend to be her lawyer because of Tom's asking? His lies to his family? The outings? Sending Amy home? The fighting with Jo, the possibility of reconciliation but its failure? His then wanting to come back? The court case and Amy and Joanne's rejection of him? How authentic a portrait of a man dissatisfied in his marriage? A mirror of contemporary behaviour?
10. Lee Remick's sensitive portrait of Joanne? As wife, mother, trying her best to please all? Her responsibility in the failure of the marriage and Tom's leaving? The picnic and the news disturbing her? Her attempts to stop Tom going? The picnic and the advances by the doctor? The lawyer and his accepting Tom's brief? The discussions with the lawyer for separation, money arrangements, ultimately for divorce? Her staying with the children? Wandering the house, trying to cope? The collage of job interviews and her lack of qualifications? Her place in the typing pool, the dinner and the attempts at seduction by the bosses? Her decision to move to New York and her being, comfortable in the city? Her discussion with her parents and her resentment towards her mother? The reconciliation? The possibilities of starting a new life, study, building up a career? The growing hostility towards Tom and the fight with him? Her growing ability to cope?
11. The long sequence of the night at the singles' bar ? the types there. their introductions to one another, wanting to start relationships, merely pick up? Her sad experience and leaving?
12. The themes of legal arrangements for separation, money arrangements, divorce? Joanne's decision to go through with the divorce?
13. The final date and the possibility for the future? How had Joanne changed? The impossibility of going back to Tom? The children and their coping, changing.. accepting the situation?
14. Society and its attitudes towards divorce? Covering over the harsh situations? The film's indications of need for preparation for marriage, deepening relationships as the years pass? Mutual admission of fault? Mutual working for love? Responsibility, change and values in marriage? How satisfying and insightful the treatment of issues in this film?
